


Heart of a Dragon

by PersoMena



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Dragon AU, Injury, M/M, Plot What Plot, at least one kiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24575407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersoMena/pseuds/PersoMena
Summary: So yeah.  This happened.  The Sides are dragons from my world of Aerese.  Does this actually take place in Aerese?  Dunno.  Just wanted to practice with my types of dragons.  And by the way, feedback about my writing is welcome - often when I hit writer's block, comments from my readers can give me ideas as to where I should go next.  (The day I decide this story is done, I'll remove the "feedback is welcome" tag - people could still ask questions, but I'll no longer beaskingfor feedback.)  Also, I finally decided there was no reason to try to wait on posting all the characters in the tags - after all, some people might be specifically looking for Janus.  He's here, I just haven't figured out when he's showing up.
Relationships: Analogical - Relationship, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders, potential LAMP
Comments: 55
Kudos: 33





	1. A Stranded Chance

Thomas had just been strolling along the beach. That’s all he’d had in mind. Then he came upon a beached thing wrapped in a fishing net.

The net was huge – so huge that it had to have been lost from a commercial fishing vessel or something – and he couldn’t exactly make out what was inside the net aside from that it was black and purple, with purple horns spiking up through the net.

 _Black and purple…_ purple _plus those horns means that this isn’t a whale…_

He walked closer carefully. Then suddenly the creature twisted, and he was fixed with a wide dark eye.

Thomas was terrified. _This is a_ dragon _! Wild water dragons are extremely dangerous with their long constricting tail! I shouldn’t go anywhere near it! But I want to help it…_

Suddenly, he wasn’t terrified anymore. He was still a little nervous, but that was about it. The dragon was still watching him, but it looked more like it was thinking. _Wait…had that…was…_

The rumors Thomas had heard hadn’t said anything about how intelligent water dragons were. He cautiously walked closer. “Um…can you understand me?”

The dragon snorted, eye narrowing slightly.

“I’m going to help you get that net off, if you’ll let me.”

The dragon stared at him for a second. Then it twitched its wings in a parody of a shrug and looked away from him.

 _I guess that’s as good an answer as I’m going to get._ Thomas approached with a bit more boldness, heading for the dragon’s back end.

It looked like this dragon had swam right into the net, so the edges were next to the tail. Said tail was entirely in the ocean, though he could see about a foot of it in the surf.

“Okay, let’s see…” He climbed onto the dragon’s hips and gripped the net. “Ho geez, this is heavy…” Carefully he walked backwards, pulling the net with him. “Whoop,” he paused as the wing ‘fingertips’ caught the holes of the net, “don’t want to hurt you…” leaning down, he carefully unhooked the net and kept heading backwards.

As the net slid off, it revealed the dragon’s true colors: a jet-black body and wings with purple patches.

“Okay, now gotta get over your head…” Thomas gathered up the net as best he could, braced and jumped up and over.

And that was when the dragon moved.

It stood up extremely suddenly, lifting its webbed hands to tug the net off its horns. Then it shook itself, flared its crests a couple of times and stretched its wings.

Thomas stared up from the sand where he’d fallen.

The dragon’s face was white, its forehead was purple, its crests were black with a patch on its left, it had black tentacle-like whiskers below its lower jaw marking it as a male, and its – his – chest was purple. Oh, and he was maybe ten feet tall at his wing-shoulders, with wings long enough to carry himself.

_Now what?_

He closed his wings again and looked down at Thomas. For a few minutes, they just stared at each other. Then the dragon opened his mouth.

“Thank you.”

And that just blew Thomas’s mind. “You can talk?!”

He snorted again. “Yes, Thomas… _and_ I can read minds. But aside from that,” he gathered up the net in his foreclaws, “I’m going to take this somewhere where it won’t tangle anyone else up.”

“Wait! Um…what’s your name?”

The dragon gave him a very measuring look. “…You don’t need that information, since I doubt we’ll meet again. If you must assign a name to my face within your memory, call me Anxiety.” Then he turned and shoved off into flight with his back legs.

Thomas’s numb mind ran through the implications of the given name as he watched Anxiety’s tail emerge slowly from the water and spread fins down its sides. That tail was extremely long, twice the length of Anxiety’s head and body combined.

“…I kinda hope we do meet again, though."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to see what Dragon Virgil looks like (because that's obviously Virgil, come on), just ask and I'll see about pictures.


	2. Bonding Over Crofter's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thomas encounters his first earth dragon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (how does one use notes)

Thomas wandered around the grocery store. Much to his frustration, the jam shelf was entirely devoid of Crofter’s today. But he’d really wanted some…

“ _ **What flavor were you looking for?**_ ” a polite male voice asked.

“Strawberry,” he answered before realizing nobody was anywhere near him to possibly ask that question.

“ _ **First door on your left.**_ ”

Thomas blinked at the door. It wasn’t an ‘Employees Only’ door like he’d thought when he noticed it out of his peripheral. Instead, it had a silhouette of a dragon on it. Walking over, he cautiously pushed it open and peered inside.

It was like staring into a giant’s grocery store. The aisle was wider, the shelves were thicker and taller, and the items on them – while familiar in brand – were larger! “Whoa…what…”

“ _ **When it became obvious that there were dragons with a taste for various human foods, various suppliers began to produce…appropriately-sized items for the most notably popular foodstuffs.**_ ” Heavy footsteps approached from the next-door aisle. “ _ **And in order to properly sell them, select stores remodeled to both accept dragon products and process draconic currency.**_ ” And then the dragon rounded the corner.

Thomas stared. He’d never seen an earth dragon before, and really what else could this be? It was almost as wide as the aisle and walking on all fours, standing maybe ten feet tall at the shoulder. It had brown eyes, long eyelashes and massive jaws, more so than that water dragon Anxiety, _glasses_ of all things, and its ears were barely visible in the midst of its neatly combed brown fur.

The most baffling thing about this dragon was its front four limbs. Not that Thomas had had a good chance to study biology on Anxiety, but he’d noticed during the large stretch that his limb order had been forelimb-wing-hind limb, with the wings at the ah…northwest and northeast in their position and the forelimbs in southwest and southeast. However, while this dragon’s limb order was the same as Anxiety’s, its basket-holding forelimbs were in the north point and its wings were in the southern placement – and they only barely looked like wings, with their travel purpose clearly being for walking and digging instead.

The dragon smiled, revealing some heavy-duty cone-shaped teeth, and then let out a low growl. And Thomas suddenly realized that all the words he’d been hearing had been in his head. “ _ **Am I the first earth dragon you’ve seen?**_ ”

“Um, yeah,” Thomas blushed. “Sorry, I, I didn’t mean to stare.”

A low chuckle emerged from the dragon. “ ** _No worries. Everyone has the same reaction to their first._** ” He nodded his head in an impromptu bow. “ ** _My name is Logan._** ”

“Um…” Thomas waved. “Hi, I’m Thomas.”

Another low growl. “ ** _Salutations, Thomas. Now, I understand that you’re looking for strawberry Crofter’s?_** ”

Thomas nodded. What could he say? Logan was right.

Logan twitched his head backward. “ ** _This way._** ” He shifted and heaved himself up onto his solid hind legs. Thomas stepped backward, his eyes wide. But Logan just shuffled in a circle and tipped onto all fours again. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the gaping human and let out a low growl. “ ** _Climb on, Thomas. I don’t mind._** ”

“O-okay.” Thomas stepped onto Logan’s short tail and clambered up, using his fur as handholds. “If you’re sure. By the way – whoa,” as Logan started up his lumbering walk, “how’d you know I was looking for Crofter’s?”

Logan started growling again, and Thomas realized that he was largely doing that to let anyone nearby know he was having a conversation with someone. “ ** _You were thinking very loudly about your plight. I do my best not to eavesdrop on other people’s thoughts, but I happen to be drawn to that brand._** ”

Thomas felt a bit of kinship with the enormous dragon. “Favorite brand?”

Logan’s growl was almost fierce. “ ** _The only jelly I’ll put in my belly._** ”

Thomas laughed a little as Logan rounded a corner and entered the jelly aisle. Then he saw the size of the jam jars and stared in awe. “What…” he carefully stood up on the dragon’s back and shifted a jar on one shelf to see how much it said was in it. “G-gallon jars of jam?! And _Crofter’s_ is doing this?! I’m in heaven!”

Logan let out another laugh, causing Thomas to lose his footing and collapse on the dragon’s back again. “ _ **Let’s see…you’d requested strawberry…ah! Here it is.**_ ” He pulled a jar from the shelf and put it into his basket. “ ** _Now, you won’t be able to afford this, and it’s a bit much for a human._** ”

“Well, that’s an understatement.” Thomas didn’t specify what he was actually answering.

“ ** _I’ll buy this for you, and if you retrieve an empty human-sized jar you can refill it from this one._** ”

“Alright.” Thomas was quiet for a minute as Logan kept walking. He hadn’t been asked to get down yet, so probably Logan didn’t mind. Then a question popped into his head. “Hey, ah, Logan? Can you talk? I mean, aloud like I am.”

Logan let out a tiny snort. “ ** _Technically, yes…_** ” They arrived at the checkout counter, where their conversation got put on hold as Logan unloaded his basket.

“That’ll be ten pounds.” The cashier loaded weights onto one side of his scale, a smirk starting to play on his face.

Thomas didn’t get what was so funny, but Logan let out a sigh. Then he started dry-heaving, letting out tiny hiccup-like sounds in the process. _What? Huh?_ Thomas slid off quickly.

“ _ **Don’t concern yourself, Thomas. All dragons have a game sac that they can use to carry things around. It’s rather like a human’s purse.**_ ” Then his convulsions reached their climax, and Logan coughed out a pile of slightly-damp stone figurines – as well as a laminated ID card. This he picked back up and re-swallowed, tilting his nose up towards the ceiling while keeping one eye on the cashier.

Thomas and the cashier watched as the earth dragon loaded little figurines onto the scales. When the scales were only a couple of ounces away, Logan looked at the cashier and grunted. “ _ **Which chess pieces would you like this time?**_ ”

“Ah…” he studied the chess pieces – cute little figurines in black and white – while Logan replaced the larger figurines in his game sac. “…the knights.”

“ _ **Very well, let’s see how many will match the scales.**_ ” He picked up each little horse – a white unicorn and black nightmare – and set them on the tray. Two of them came close, and the second nightmare balanced it. “ ** _No worries,_** ” he reassured the cashier, who was doing a poor job hiding his disappointment, “ ** _the white knight will still be available next time._** ” Sweeping up the remaining ‘currency’ and his purchases, he nodded his thanks and walked out. “ ** _Thomas, once you've obtained an empty jar, meet me outside with whatever transportation you have._** ”

Thomas blinked, and then realized that if he followed Logan out the dragon’s entrance, he wouldn’t be anywhere near his car out the front. “Oh. Okay.” Turning around, he headed back to the human’s side to get to his car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't quite nailed down the earth dragon's design, so Logan's look might not be quite accurate. It's close enough for me to use, obviously. Also, the reason for Logan's sigh wasn't because of the cost: it was because he could sense that the cashier was sorely tempted to say "cough it up." (And no, the cashier isn't Patton making dad jokes in his head; Patton wouldn't have been able to resist actually making the joke. Patton turns up later.)


	3. Bonding Over Crofter's part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thomas gets some more Crofter's as promised, and a couple of unanswered concepts from the previous chapter get addressed.

With a washed-up old Crofter’s jar in his possession, Thomas drove back to the grocery store. This time, however, he spun around to the other side of the building to find a parking space.

Almost as soon as he rounded the building, however, he saw Logan. He was lying down on his side, glancing around as if looking for something. When Thomas’s car pulled around, the earth dragon’s gaze locked on it and he lumbered to his feet. “ _ **Ah, Thomas! There you are!**_ ”

"I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long,” Thomas pulled around near Logan and parked.

" ** _Ah, no, I was only here for two minutes fourteen seconds – no, don’t bother leaving your motor vehicle,_** ” he growled softly as Thomas made to get out, “ ** _you can just drive with me back to my home. I don’t mind human visitors, so I arranged for there to be ‘parking’ for those who have to travel further than they can walk._** ”

"…Okay.”

Logan broke into a…trot? Did dragons use the same terminology as horses? Anyway, Thomas could keep up in the car. Glancing at the speedometer, he saw that he was driving thirty miles per hour. _Logan could probably run faster than this if he wanted to._

" ** _I can, but an earth dragon’s top speed can only be achieved bipedally._** ” Thomas jumped in his seat as Logan slowed to an almost-complete stop at an intersection, moving his hand with bike signals so that Thomas wouldn’t crash into him. “ ** _It’s an undignified appearance, in my opinion, so I don’t use it often. And while I can move at a faster speed quadrupedally than I am currently using,_** ” he signaled a right turn and started moving again, “ ** _I reserve that speed for open spaces where I am unlikely to trample anything or anyone important._** ”

Thomas tried briefly to imagine what an earth dragon would look like on two legs and failed. Then he nodded. _That’s fair. It’s like us humans in our cars only driving at forty miles tops around the neighborhood and going up to sixty-five on the freeways._

" ** _Correct._** ”

They were silent for the remainder of the journey, which only took about five minutes. And when Logan stopped and turned around, Thomas just had to stop and take it in.

Logan’s house was a huge cube with an open smaller cube off one side, no doubt the garage that he’d mentioned. Both were the same color as the ground, or close enough. Everything was very…practical and functional, matching the mind of the dragon who was –

waving him towards the garage.

Pulling in quickly, he parked and got out to join Logan. “Nice place you’ve got.”

" ** _Thank you. I’ve had humans come by and say that my home is dull, but it suits me._** ” Logan shifted and opened the door. Thomas noticed that the door wasn’t tall enough to accommodate the dragon’s full height, as he essentially crept in through the opening. “ _ **You may come in. Mind the step.**_ ”

 _Step?_ Thomas approached cautiously and peered in.

The floor was a good four feet below the door’s bottom edge.

"And…you couldn’t be bothered to include some human-size stairs from your front door into your living room so that visitors aren’t risking twisting their ankles?” he asked as he sat down in the doorway and carefully lowered his feet to the floor.

" ** _An oversight, I assure you. I don’t have human visitors all that often, and none of the humans I’d had over ever mentioned it. Of course,_** ” Logan added as an afterthought, “ _ **none of those humans had come inside. They parked in the garage and permitted me to remove the appliances I’d ordered from their vehicles in exchange for what I had carved to pay for them.**_ ”

“You carve? So you carved those stone figurines yourself?”

Logan nodded.

" _All_ of them?” Those chess pieces had been sized for humans to use them on a human chessboard, making them tiny in Logan’s large hands.

" ** _Despite my appearance, I am capable of delicate work. When it comes to stone, there is nothing I cannot do to it._** ”

"I’m impressed.” Thomas followed him into another room. He’d been concerned that Logan hadn’t done any decorating inside the house, since the outside was rather bland, and his fears had been…sort of justified. At first look, it was, with its bare walls and absence of furniture. But then he’d taken another look and saw the off-white tiles covering every surface and the oil-filled metal dishes that Logan evidently lit ablaze when there was no natural light coming through the windows. “You know, you really do have a nice place here.” That same off-white tile was in the kitchen, though in a different shape to cause a different pattern.

" _ **Thank you.**_ ” At the far end of the kitchen was a metal door. Logan opened it to show that it was a walk-in refrigerator – at least, humans would treat it as such. The earth dragon had twisted together some wires and cut a piece of thick glass, given it some shelves, and made it a dragon refrigerator. Reaching in, he pulled out the jar of Crofter’s. “ ** _Since I knew you were coming over, I opened it. Now let’s see…do I have any utensils that are small enough to match your jar…_** ” He opened a stone cupboard – made Thomas think of the Flintstones, except it didn’t have a bone handle – and rummaged around inside it. “ ** _Ah! Here._** ”

The ladle he retrieved looked tiny in his large hand, but when he passed it to Thomas, the human saw it was a large soup ladle. “I guess that’ll work.” He sat down on the floor and Logan pushed the jar closer to him, already open. “By the way,” Thomas carefully worked the ladle into the jar and pulled out a scoop, hoping he’d managed to get a small enough amount that he could slide all of it into his own jar, “I’d asked you at the store if earth dragons could talk aloud, and you said yes, but you kinda sounded like you had another shoe to drop.”

" _ **Shoe?**_ ” Logan cocked his head to the side. “ _ **I hadn’t dropped any shoes, I didn’t have any.**_ ”

Apparently Logan could be very literal. “No, I mean,” Thomas fell silent as he went into focused mode, carefully pouring the jam into his jar. Once he was done, he looked up again. “I mean it sounded like you were going to add something to that answer. Like it was a ‘Yes, but…’”

Logan didn’t answer. Thomas managed to add another half-ladle to his jar and decided that was enough. He set the ladle down carefully on the open gallon-jar and closed up his own jar. “Thanks for sharing, by the way.”

"Yohrrre wehlkom.”

Thomas’s head snapped around and he stared at Logan. Yeah, that had been aloud, but it had also been rough, deep, and barely understandable!

" ** _And that is why earth dragons tend to speak telepathically. Our jaws and larynxes are simply not structured for easy human speech. I’m probably the best off of my kind in that regard, my own jaw isn’t as heavy as other males of similar age and my voice is higher. Fire and water dragons have a far easier time speaking aloud. An air dragon has a suitable larynx, but it also has a beak, so if it is to speak aloud it must use ventriloquism, which is something only half of the air dragon population cares to do._** ”

"Ah.” What else, really, could he say?

" _ **But I forget myself.**_ ” He picked up the jar and ladle, reclosed the one and licked off the other, and motioned. “ _ **If you would be willing to temporarily store your jar in with mine, I could give you a tour of the rest of my house. If you want, of course.**_ ”

Tour an earth dragon’s house? Thomas grinned. “Sure!”


	4. Collision Course!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thomas reminisces about his house tour and meets a couple of colorful characters.

That had been a unique tour.

Logan didn’t actually lead the tour directly. Anyone who dared to peek in his windows would just think that the earth dragon was reading in the living room while Thomas wandered around by himself.

In reality, Logan had been looking through Thomas’s eyes and speaking in his head as Thomas explored on his own. In this fashion, Thomas learned that Logan’s odd house had a dining room, a library, a bathroom that was just barely within specs for a human to be able to use – giving weight to Logan’s claim that he was willing to chill with humans – a bedroom that Logan requested he stay out of, and a guest bedroom. There was also a room with a large door in the corner of the floor that Logan warned him led to a type of basement without any human ladders leading in or out “ _ **so please do not try to go down there**_ ” and an odd untiled space in a corner of the ceiling.

When he asked, the answer was “ _ **I wanted to leave options open for a second floor. I personally am not interested in going higher than standing on what is currently my roof, so actually constructing the second floor has been low priority. But if another dragon decided to build his or her house on my roof and we become positively acquainted, it would be nice to have the two connected.**_ ”

“So that’s why your roof’s flat!” It had been the only thing that didn’t really fit with the practicality of this earth dragon. A flat roof without anything resembling weather protection just seemed like a far larger oversight than just forgetting to put human-sized steps in a four-foot drop from the front door. “Do you have any requests for what sort of neighbors you get?”

“ _ **Honestly, anyone would work. Though it is improbable that another earth dragon will choose to come live here, because I have already placed my claim on the soil below the floor, and thus bringing any new soil closer in order to construct a new floor above would be heavily impaired.**_ ”

Although Logan had mentioned buying the land and utilities, he never stated outright how he’d officially built his house and Thomas never directly asked. However, the dragon had dropped enough hints that Thomas had gathered all the walls, ceilings and floors had been made of the dirt that used to occupy the space. It was strange, though. The one look at the untiled space (all interior surfaces were either covered in tile or cobblestones, which made sense seeing as earth dragons could still breathe fire) didn’t look like plain old dirt.

It was still puzzling a week later as Thomas was walking around in a nearby park. Finally, he told himself firmly to not worry about it. “If it hasn’t fallen in yet and it’s strong enough for another dragon to be jumping around and building his own house on top of it, then it’s none of my business how he made it.”

After a few minutes, he heard running. He barely had a chance to process the sound before the runners were practically on top of him – a couple of fire dragons! One had gleaming scales like garnets, and the other was a dirty jade green.

As the green dragon blew past Thomas, the red dragon realized that the human was right in its path, let out a yelp and tried valiantly to stop – kinda hard to do going fifty. Its wings flared open to try to act as parachutes, its heels tried to dig into the ground, and it did slow, but Thomas noted that it wasn’t slowing down quite fast enough. At the very last second, the red dragon’s face set into lines of determination and it jumped over Thomas’s head!

It didn’t quite stick its landing. Its wings had closed during the leap, so at least neither of them got broken, but it did land hard on its shoulder as it rolled onto its side.

The green dragon skidded to a stop with far more finesse, turned to look back at them and shouted, “Wicked wipeout, bro!”

The red dragon ignored his…brother? Instead he turned to look at Thomas, pushing himself up onto his elbow with his other hand splayed on the ground, clearly going for a dramatic fallen-hero pose among some of his own fallen scales. “Are you all right, citizen?”

“Am _I_ all right?!” Thomas nearly exploded. “Are _you_ all right?”

He made to get up, but putting pressure on the shoulder he fell on caused him to let out a hiss that could have melted stone.

The green dragon finally found his compassion and walked over to help his brother up, checking his shoulder in the process. “Congratulations, you overachiever: you managed to sprain both of your right shoulders.”

Thomas stared up at the two bipedal dragons. They towered over him like T-Rexes with wings, horns and longer arms!

“It doesn’t matter. A couple of sprained shoulders are nothing compared to the damage that could have been done to this little human. Remember what happened when you decided to take a shortcut through a pig’s field in our race last month?”

The green dragon seemed incredibly unconcerned about what had apparently been a severe trampling of livestock. “Ahh, those walking porkchops were slated for slaughter anyway.”

Thomas cleared his throat, hoping to prevent this from escalating into an argument. “Um, my name’s Thomas.” He held his hand out and hesitated. Did dragons shake hands? Anxiety and Logan hadn’t shown any interest in doing so…but then again, Anxiety hadn’t shown any interest in sticking around any longer than he had to, and Logan had been carrying his shopping basket when they first met…

Roman dropped into a dramatic bent-knee pose and used his left hand to engulf Thomas’s surprisingly gently. “Greetings! I’m Roman, and the pig-trampler behind me is my twin brother Remus.”

Remus waved borderline-snarkily as Roman stood up again. Thomas just stared. “…Twins?” He glanced back and forth, trying to see the resemblance. Well, okay, they did both have narrow faces, but since he didn’t see many fire dragons, he couldn’t say how much of their similarity was because of species and how much was true twinship.

Remus grinned, showing blade-like teeth. “Everybody says that, but yup, we hatched from the same egg different colors. Isn’t it glorious?”

“…Yeah. Glorious.” Thomas tried to get something resembling composure back and rolled his head, trying to ease the kink he was starting to get in his neck. “So…I don’t remember seeing either of you around town…” Then he yelped as suddenly Remus took two steps and picked him up.

“Here, let’s get you to eye level before you break your own neck.” Remus set Thomas into the space between his right wing-shoulder and his right arm-shoulder. “To answer your question, we arrived here recently.”

Roman picked up the explanation. “Our clan threw Remus out about a year ago, and I left with him. He may be an aggravation, but he is still my brother.”

“Spare the sap before I hurl.”

“We’ve been wandering ever since, just trying to find a good place to live that could accept both of us.”

Thomas studied both of them. “Well…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure, the fire dragon is probably the element I've gotten the least figured out by terms of appearance. I don't know exactly how tall they are beyond that they stand taller than water and earth, and I know they're almost exclusively bipedal in their walking, yes like T-Rexes. I've never tried to draw them that I can remember.


	5. Meet-Ups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a revelation happens and all currently-introduced sides move in together.

Logan settled down in his living room, having an excellent conversation with his partner. What was nice about him was that he didn’t mind listening to Logan’s extremely heavy accent. The earth dragon tended to speak telepathically with humans, because often those who knew he’d “mastered” the art of auditory conversation said that it was annoying attempting to mentally translate the things he said, especially if he wandered off on tangents. However, his partner – who resisted using the word “mate,” even if their relationship was more than mere partners – didn’t mind listening to him ramble vocally. Certainly he didn’t really care to speak much himself, preferring to listen.

Then a knock came at the door. 

Seconds later, the door burst open. “Boo!” a green-faced fire dragon shouted through the doorway. 

Logan’s partner flailed back and yelped, preparing to flee. 

Logan shifted and gently set a foot onto his long tail, holding him in place as he heard someone outside sigh. “ _ **Stay calm, I’ll deal with this.**_ ” 

“Remus, bro, that is not how you approach someone who we are intending to interview for the chance to live above.” 

“Wait,” Thomas’s voice echoed from outside, “is someone else in there?” 

A red fire dragon’s face poked in. “Greetings…might we come in?” 

Logan sighed. “ _ **I suppose you may as well.**_ ” Since the door was already open, after all. 

The two dragons stepped in. Both of them seemed about his age; the first one through the door – Remus – was a dirty jade color, while the other had gleaming garnet scales. Both had to crouch somewhat, as Logan’s ceiling was too low for a fire dragon to stand straight. (He hadn’t realized he was ever going to be visited by fire dragons, so sue him!) 

And falling off of Remus’s shoulder into Remus’s hands was Thomas. “Um, hi Logan, this is Remus and back there is his brother Roman…” he smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you already had someone over…”

“ _ **There is no need to concern yourself on that note,**_ ” although Logan wasn’t sure what was going to happen now, “ _ **Virgil has already been living here with me…**_ ”

And then the conversation stopped as Virgil and Thomas pointed at each other and simultaneously shouted “ _I know you!_ ” 

Logan, Roman and Remus all looked back and forth between Thomas and Virgil. Thomas’s eyes were so wide that his sclera showed all around his irises, and Virgil’s purple-and-black crests had shot straight up. 

“Well, this is an astonishing turn of events!” Roman announced as Remus set Thomas down and Logan decided he didn’t need to be standing on Virgil’s tail anymore. 

“Your name is Virgil?” Thomas asked. “Um, hi? Were, um, were you here the last time I came over?” 

Virgil’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly – even Logan wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking for it – and Logan felt the lightest brush against his mind. “ _ **When was that?**_ ” he whispered into the earth dragon’s mind. 

“ _ **Last week,**_ ” Logan ‘whispered’ back. 

The water dragon shrugged. “Yeah, I was here; I was below in my room.” 

Remus’s head shot up. “You have a dungeon?!” Then he hit his head on the ceiling and had to drop again, holding his head in his claws. His enthusiasm wasn’t dampened by that, however, as he went on, “Can I live down there, too?” 

It was like the world within the living room had come to a complete halt. Virgil stared at Remus, as if wondering if this fire dragon was for real. Logan rather agreed; fire dragons weren’t necessarily against living underground, but they tended to be wary of it because of the possibilities of ventilation being blocked or cave-ins trapping them. And here was Remus, yes initially planning to ask alongside his brother for permission to build on Logan’s roof but immediately reversing and asking to live underground upon learning that the basement existed. Thomas just looked confused. 

After forty-five seconds – in which Virgil was undoubtedly analyzing Remus’s brain to determine what sort of roommate the fire dragon would be, that was just his way – Virgil sighed. “The bathroom must stay intact and clean, and you absolutely must stay out of my personal library and pool unless I specifically invite you. Otherwise, eh, I’m not using all of the space down there so you could have a room or two.” 

Remus bobbed up and down a bit at the hip-pivot, barely flapped his wings and bounced on the balls of his feet, clearly wanting to jump for joy at this opportunity. “Yay! Can I go down there now?” 

“Sure; I’ll go with you, show you where you’re allowed to be.” Virgil slinked off, his tail lightly tracing across Logan’s hip as he walked towards the basement door. Remus followed him, cackling like some sort of villain. 

“I hope the ceiling’s taller in the basement than it is up here,” Roman sounded resigned, “otherwise he’s going to constantly get cricks in his back and bumps on his head.” 

“ _ **Remus will be fine**_ ,” Logan sighed, “ _ **the dimensions down there were based on the fact that Virgil does occasionally choose to walk bipedally, and bipedally he’s the same height as you two, possibly a little shorter. Will you be satisfied with this arrangement?**_ ” 

“Actually…yes. Remus is my brother, and I love him, but he can be…difficult to live with. He’d be easier to deal with if he’s shut away in the basement.” Roman evidently realized he must sound callous in regards to Virgil, for he straightened – stopping just shy of hitting his own head on the ceiling – and waved his hands frantically. “I don’t mean to say that I’d happily foist him onto your housemate, but the mind powers of water dragons are legendary; if Remus gets on his nerves, he’d probably just mind-zap him into submission.” 

“ _ **Trust me, Roman, Virgil would not have permitted your brother to enter the basement if he had failed the examination.**_ ” Then Logan turned his attention to Thomas. “ _ **I apologize, we are talking over your head now. I am curious: how did you meet a couple of fire dragons?**_ ” 

Thomas blinked in surprise. “I thought you were going to ask how I met Anxi-I mean Virgil.” 

“ _ **Virgil already told me how you and he had crossed paths.**_ ” Logan didn’t elaborate, though he knew that he owed Thomas deeply for that. Virgil could have in theory gotten out of that net himself, but in practice it was debatable. 

“Oh. Well…they were racing in the park I was walking in, Roman here saw I was in his path a bit late and jumped over me. He apparently…” he fell silent, processing something he evidently only half-remembered one of the fire dragons saying, “…strained or sprained both shoulders on his right.” 

Logan studied Roman and ran through the mechanics required for such an injury to occur from a fall. “ _ **That…took ingenuity.**_ ” 

Roman shrugged it off. “I haven’t been moving the limbs on that side much since the fall. It only barely hurts anymore.” 

“ _ **You still must not push yourself too hard until the pain is completely gone.**_ ” 

“Yes, Doctor.” 

“ _ **Anyway, I take it that you shall not be staying in the basement with Remus and Virgil?**_ ” 

“Goodness, no! I need sunlight!” 

“ _ **Then while your shoulders recover, we can discuss how we will be going about constructing your addition to the house and what contributions you and Remus can make to justify the two of you staying. I will not permit freeloading dragons.**_ ” Logan glanced at Thomas again. “ _ **I remembered to make the stairs for you, Thomas. Also, if you should choose to move in with us, I would not set any conditions on you.**_ ” 

Thomas blinked in surprise. “Really? Oh. Ah…I’ll…think about it, but thanks for the offer!” Logan read in Thomas’s thoughts – he wasn’t trying to pry, really, he just wanted a probability rating on how likely it was that the human would take him up on that offer – that the offer had surprised him, and the notion of living with dragons was intriguing to him. Intriguing enough to where he was putting serious consideration to accepting, but he was still going to return to his current home to think about all the advantages and disadvantages first. 

Which was as it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, everyone's wondering: "Where's Patton?" He's coming, I just haven't established when or how.


	6. Enter the Final Element!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we get to see Patton!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: vomiting (don't worry, he's okay)

The fire dragons had a cart.

Well, in all actuality, it was a semi-truck’s old trailer that someone had welded handlebars onto. And going by how rust-pitted it was, it was clearly more Remus’s than Romans (Roman probably would have made efforts to improve its appearance).

Remus used it first, dragging it over with his belongings in it so he could unload his stuff into the basement – which he was still calling a “dungeon.” Once Logan saw that they had it, he forbade Roman from using it himself until his arm had fully recovered. Roman’s response was essentially “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be caught dead pulling that old thing!” 

So when it came to going for the supplies, Logan and Remus went together. Remus pulled the cart with Logan in it, they worked together to select and purchase the supplies – okay, Logan selected the materials they’d need while Remus made inappropriate remarks about human tools; at least Remus did participate in the payment – and Remus dragged everything and Logan back home. 

When Thomas visited a week later, he saw that they already had Roman’s level mostly blocked out. Logan and Virgil were standing on top of the house, a few layers of bricks surrounding them on the outer walls. A pile of bricks and a pile of stones were sitting between them. 

“Hi!” Thomas waved. “Can I come up?” 

“ _ **Certainly,**_ ” Logan answered. “ _ **Come inside, Virgil’s tail is hanging down through the shaft.**_ ” A picture of the room that had the door to Virgil and Remus’s basement and the tile-less patch of ceiling – which now was open to the sky – appeared in Thomas’s mind. 

Thomas ran inside, gladly taking the new steps down – they were solid and made of that same mysterious not-dirt substance as the walls and ceiling. 

“ _ **By the way,**_ ” a new voice spoke into his head – Virgil’s – “ _ **I also put some additions down for you, I mean if you ever want to use them to visit Remus or something.**_ ” 

Thomas saw what he was talking about right away when he got there. Next to Virgil’s door, tucked into the corner, was a cabinet. And near the far wall, between door and wall, was a pair of hooks set into the floor. 

And there was Virgil’s tail, draped through the opening in the ceiling. He cautiously approached and tapped the side of it that didn’t have any fins – he couldn’t tell if it was top or bottom from this angle. 

The purple-and-black tail lifted and twined around Thomas’s waist. He barely had time to react before he was hefted off the floor and through the hole. “That cabinet has a rope ladder in it. Logan helped me measure what would be appropriate for a human to use.” 

“Oh. Thanks.” 

“You’re welcome.” Then Virgil looked at Logan. “You ready?” 

Logan tilted his head in consideration. Then he shook his head. “ _ **Another two minutes.**_ ” 

“So where are the fire dragons?” 

“ _ **Roman is choosing windows. This is the final pass of brick we can lay before we must stop and wait for him to arrive with them, since we had not been able to accurately plan what sort of windows Roman would want. And Remus…he went to talk to a mutual acquaintance of theirs to ask for aid in this endeavor.**_ ” 

Thomas blinked. “Aren’t you two – I mean four – doing just fine building on your own?” 

Virgil answered. “We are, for now…but Princey wants thirty-foot ceilings, maybe even forty feet. While we can build the walls that high on our own with some teamwork, getting the ceiling up there isn’t something we can do.” 

Thomas stared, trying to imagine ceilings that high. He reminded himself that he was talking to dragons. “Who’s he inviting?” 

The water dragon shuddered. “They refuse to say, which is worrying me. All either of them said was that this individual was male, and Logan insisted I not read their minds about it.” 

“ _ **I inferred that they wanted him to be a surprise for us, and they did say…**_ ” an ominous sound suddenly emerged from Logan’s throat. “ _ **Now it’s ready, Virgil.**_ ” 

Virgil spun around and grabbed up a couple of bricks, waiting poised. “Thomas, can you move away from the walls? We’ll need some space for this.” 

Thomas didn’t know what to expect, but he obeyed. Then the two dragons demonstrated how they’d accomplished the walls up to the point they had. 

Logan swiveled to face the wall and proceeded to cough up a gray substance on top of the bricks that had already been laid. As he walked along the walls, continuing to do that, Virgil followed. He’d take a brick, tap one short end into the stuff and slap it down in place, and then do the same with the next brick, making sure they were up against each other with only the gray stuff in between. They did that all the way around the perimeter of the house, until Virgil set the final brick in place. 

Logan carefully worked his mouth, and then shifted and spit into a bucket that Thomas hadn’t noticed was there until that moment – it hadn’t been visible from below. “ _ **I don’t much care for doing that, but one must bear indignities in construction.**_ ” 

Thomas stared at the two dragons. “What was that?” 

The earth dragon answered. “ _ **Earth dragons can digest rock. It has no nutritional value, but when soil or rocks get combined with an earth dragon’s stomach acid, it creates a by-product that is useful in construction.**_ ” 

Thomas stared at him. “Wait…so that’s how you built…” he lightly stomped on the floor, Logan’s roof. 

“ _ **Yes. I don’t talk about it because humans have a tendency to find it disgusting, even though it is completely sterile once it sets as long as I make sure my digestive system is completely clear before I begin.**_ ” 

_This house…below my feet…is made of digested dirt and rocks._ Thomas was quiet for a long minute before deciding resolutely that he wasn’t going to let himself be bothered by it and voiced aloud the same thought he’d had before he’d been almost run over by fire dragons. “If it hasn’t fallen in yet, and it’s normal for dragons, I’m not going to worry about it.” 

“ _ **Thank you for understanding.**_ ” 

“By the way, you were saying something before…” Thomas pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the brick wall. “…that?” 

“ _ **Ah, yes. They said that we would like him, or more notably**_ **Roman _said that we would like him. And while Roman may seem rather…_** ”

“Flaky?” Virgil snarked. 

“ _ **…I suppose…however, I’d trust his judgement of another’s character more than I’d trust Remus. My theory is that the friend they’re inviting over to help is an air dragon.**_ ” 

“How do you figure?” Thomas asked. 

“ _ **The welding of those handlebars to Remus’s cart. Fire dragon flame can’t do that, it’s too diffused.**_ ” Logan glanced at Thomas. 

After a moment of an unsettling feeling, an image appeared in Thomas’s mind of someone using a lighter and hairspray as an impromptu flamethrower. 

“ _ **Earth dragon fire is incapable of welding like that as well, for it is too heavy.**_ ” Another image, this time of magma sliding down the side of a volcano. 

“And water dragons can’t breathe fire at all,” Virgil piped up, cockily pointing at himself with his tail. 

“ _ **Indeed. However, air dragons have a highly concentrated beam, which they can use quite effectively as a welding torch, a sautering iron, or even a plasma arc.**_ ” 

“Or they’ve just befriended some humans who have a welding torch and an industrial crane,” Thomas felt like he ought to at least attempt to defend his own species. 

“ _ **That is still a possibility, yes,**_ ” Logan admitted. “ _ **However, the probability of a common human**_ ” the impression Thomas got on the word ‘common’ was ‘anyone not actually employed in architectural construction’ “ _ **with such a crane is highly unlikely.**_ ” 

“One could say,” a voice suddenly sounded from above as a shadow passed overhead, “that the chances of that are…” a large pale blue creature fluttered down and settled carefully on the piles of stone and bricks, lifting a crest to cause glasses that were oddly familiar to tilt into place. “…Infinitesimal?” and the final word was uncannily like Logan’s mind-voice. 

Speaking of Logan…

“You mahke _wahn_ misstaek,” the earth dragon roared indignantly, pointing at the creature, “and _thes_ es waht hahppens!” 

Virgil smirked and waved. “Hi, Patton.” 

Patton spread huge feathered wings upward. “Virgil!” Hopping off the piles, he awkwardly hugged the water dragon. “Good to see you, kiddo!” 

Thomas stared, though trying not to seem like he was staring. 

Patton was covered in sky-blue feathers, with gray feathers circling the neck in a kind of full collar. He was kind of like Logan in how his limbs were positioned, with a couple of key differences: his back legs were as long as the fire dragons’, the highest forelimbs were the wings, and his wings ended in the same place on his body as Virgil’s wings did, making them the biggest Thomas had ever seen! Then there was the flowy feathered tail, the long neck, the feathered ears, the beak, the crest that just wouldn’t stop moving…

“You’re a _dragon_?!” he blurted. 

Patton’s neck swiveled as he turned to look at Thomas. That gaze was intense, only slightly dimmed by the glasses that looked a lot like Logan’s. Then he opened his beak as his crest once again flared and his feathers fluffed a bit. And that perky voice emerged. “Hello, human! I’m Patton, and yes, I’m an air dragon.” 

“…Thomas.” Patton was using ventriloquism. This was…a lot. 

“Hello, Thomas!” his beak gaped just a little wider and he shook Thomas’s hand. Then he turned back towards the dragons. “ _ **We can talk more later, Thomas, I promise!**_ ” “Remus said that you would be needing my help?” 

Logan sighed. “ _ **Yes…Roman’s ceiling will be far too high for us to build on our own. I trust you can manage such a task with three airborne assistants?**_ ” 

“By the way,” Virgil tilted his head. “Where _is_ Remus, anyway?” 

“He’s here. He went down to his room. He said something about wanting to set up chains down there.” Patton’s feathers flattened. Thomas wasn’t an expert yet at reading any dragon body language, let alone air dragons, but somehow, he guessed that Patton couldn’t comprehend anyone wanting to live underground. “And…do you suppose I could build my nest on Roman’s roof?” 

“ _ **Patton, that is entirely between you and Roman. By the time his rooms are constructed, any floor above his may as well not exist to me.**_ ” 

“I wouldn’t mind,” Virgil said softly. 

Patton’s crest feathers shot straight up, and he gaped again. “Yay! Okay, I’ll help!” He looked around and all but chirped, “Looks like you’re not quite ready for me yet, so Thomas and I can go hang out somewhere else. Ah, do you mind if we chill in your house, Lo?” 

“ _ **Go ahead.**_ ” Logan started counting the cinderblocks again. 

“Oh, ah, could I ask something?” Thomas held his hand up as Patton approached him. “How come, um…uh…” He glanced around. “Um, can I get a mind-check here? I’m not sure how to ask this question.” 

Virgil laughed. “You’re wondering why two of the dragons on this roof are wearing glasses.” 

“Um, yeah. I mean,” he glanced up at Patton, “shouldn’t an _air_ dragon have perfect eyesight?” 

“Well yeah! I can spot a ladybug on a blade of grass from the top of a fifty-story building.” 

Logan made an odd noise, but he didn’t say anything aloud or telepathically. 

“But other than that,” he lifted a claw and lowered his head, lifting his glasses and squinting at the human, “I’m farsighted. You’re all blurry.” He giggled and let his glasses fall back onto his beak with a click. 

“ _ **That’s a common and understandable trait of air dragons,**_ ” Logan agreed, adjusting his own glasses. “ _ **Earth dragons are the opposite, equally understandably: a creature who spends most of his time tunneling underground doesn’t need to be able to see very far past the end of his nose.**_ ” 

Thomas translated that as meaning that Logan was nearsighted and nodded. 

“Come on, Thomas!” Patton swung his head around and grabbed Thomas by the back of his shirt. “Let’s go downstairs!” 

Thomas found himself lifted up and swung around onto the air dragon’s feathered back, and clung on as Patton walked over to the hole in the floor and slipped through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm considering making an animated series for this. Opinions on whether I do or not would be appreciated.


	7. Perky Patton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas and Patton have a short conversation before Remus interjects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I wasn't really sure where this chapter was going, but at least it does have a decent lead-in.

Patton slipped down gently into Logan’s house, Thomas clinging on tightly to his back. Once they stopped, Thomas carefully started to climb back down – only for Patton to grab the back of his shirt with his beak and swing him around and down again.

Patton lifted his head and started to raise his crest. The feathers brushed the ceiling, and he immediately brought his crest back down. “Whoop! Boy, Logan didn’t make his ceiling all that high, did he?” He laughed a funny chortling laugh, causing Thomas to grin.

“Okay, let’s see…” Patton swiveled his head around. “Where’s a good place for me to sit down so you don’t have to look up so far?”

“Uh…” Thomas thought. “Logan’s got a…soft patch in the living room?” The earth dragon didn’t really have a couch, which made sense given the implied weight he had. Instead, there was essentially a large flat piece of furniture foam in the approximate shape of a giant couch.

“Perfect! Lead me to it!”

Thomas obliged, feeling a little odd staying ahead of Patton as the air dragon bounced his front half cheerfully. Patton’s movement was definitely strange, and Thomas finally decided that it was probably because his front legs were shorter than his back legs. That, and Patton’s natural bubbly personality causing him to consider it fun to bounce while his back legs walked normally.

Once in the living room, Patton climbed onto the makeshift couch and lay down. “Okay, I’m down. You can just sit by my head and ask any questions you have.” He set his head down on his hands, curling his neck a little, and fixed one eye on Thomas.

Thomas sat down on the corner, trying to remember what his questions were. “Um…I guess I’m having a little trouble with the thought of a feathered dragon.”

Patton’s beak gaped open a tiny bit in what could almost have been a smirk. “Let me guess: you had a similar response to Logan’s fur?”

“Well, um…yeah. I was more fixated on his arms in our first meeting, but yeah the fur was a surprise.”

“Yup, not all dragons are scaley. Half of them are fluffy!” he fluffed all his feathers to really bring his point home.

Thomas laughed. “You sure are!”

Patton joined in the laughter with cute chirps. “Yup, I may be feathery and fluffy, but I’m all dragon!”

Thomas settled down again and considered what little he’d heard from Logan about air dragons. “Um, you’re really good at talking. Logan hasn’t said much about air dragons, but he did say only about half of all existing air dragons make the effort to learn to talk.”

Patton’s head lifted and tilted to the side. “Ah…yeah. Air dragons are kinda divided into four groups,” he lifted up a front claw and started ticking off digits. “Those that learn how to fly, but don’t bother learning how to speak; those that learn how to speak, but don’t bother learning how to fly; those that don’t bother learning how to do either, and those who learn how to do both.”

“And you’re in that fourth group?” Thomas guessed. Patton _had_ flown in, after all…

“Yup! I’m an overachiever!” The air dragon gape-grinned at him.

Thomas laughed again. This dragon was something else. “Well, the only other thing I can think of to ask is…and Logan will probably be asking this, too…what’ll you be contributing to the family? This is technically Logan’s property, and he doesn’t want any freeloading dragons living here.”

Patton closed his beak and tilted his head in the other direction. Then his beak opened again. “I have a bank account.”

Thomas stared. “You’re kidding.”

He gape-grinned. “Nope! I donate my dropped flight feathers to hospitals, and since they don’t carry dragon currency, they pay me in human money. I had to set up a bank account to accept it.”

“…Okay. Wow. Not going to ask how much you make.” Thomas laughed weakly.

Patton shrugged his large wings, a very controlled half-spread that quickly closed again, and half-shut his eyes modestly. “Eh, I get by.”

Then Remus came in, stooped almost double. “Patton! I thought I heard my favorite fluffy parrot-dragon! Give us a kiss, give us a kiss!”

Patton rolled his eyes, lifted his head up and pointed his beak in Remus’s direction for the fire dragon to plant a loud kiss on the end of it. “Hello, Remus. How’s life treating you?”

“It’s great! I’ve got my rooms all set up if you want to see them!”

The air dragon shuddered, all his feathers flattening. “I don’t know…”

“Virgil’s pool down there is the only birdbath on the premises, and Lolo’s not going to let you put a birdbath on your floor – I mean, you can ask, but I _really_ doubt he’d allow it – so you might as well take a gander at it and see what it’s like, you silly goose.”

Patton’s feathers all rose, and then flattened again as he sighed. “No spiders down there?”

“No spiders.”

“Okay, let’s see what it’s like down there.” Patton slowly got to his feet.

Thomas stood up as well. “Would you like it if I went with you? I haven’t been down there yet either.”

“Thank you.”

The three of them headed over to the floor hatch. Remus went down first in an uncontrolled fall headfirst with a “Whee!” of excitement. Patton leaned over in unease.

“I’m okay,” Remus called up. “Logan gave me a soft pillow to land on. He said I “shouldn’t put that sort of trauma on my spine and wings every single day.” And Roman said that if he was going to visit me, the pillow must be there, so whatever. Come on down!”

Once again, Patton’s feathers rose and fell as he sighed. Then he turned around and carefully walked his hind legs backward into the hole. “Coming…”

Thomas reached over and gently rubbed Patton’s hand as the air dragon closed his wings tightly and cautiously slid his tail downward. “You’re doing great.”

“Thanks…” he squirmed his way backwards until his abdomen was entirely within the hole. His crest feathers shifted in unease, and then he looked over his shoulder. “Where’s the flo-oh!” Suddenly Patton let go of the floor and his wings flared, stopping just short of hitting the edges of the hole.

But he didn’t fall. He was just hovering there as Remus cackled from below.

Patton glared into the hole as he slowly moved downward. “Warn me next time, Remus! I could have broken my wings in my surprise!”

“Sorry about that!”

Remus didn’t really sound all that sorry, Thomas thought as he pulled the rope ladder from its cupboard. “Okay, let’s see…loop one, loop two, loop them onto the hooks…” he peered into the hole. “Rope ladder incoming!” he pitched the roll of ladder down and climbed in.


	8. Exploring the Basement (Kinda)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally get a look at the basement (or at least part of it)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I couldn't really justify exploring all of the rooms in the basement in this chapter. We'll see the dragons' rooms at some other point.

Thomas climbed down the ladder, looking around as he did.

The walls were covered in tile, just like above. Unlike above, however, these tiles were mostly tending towards the darker hues.

Once Thomas was about halfway down, he looked behind him, saw the enormous black pillow that Remus had landed on and decided there was no reason to climb the rest of the way. Leaping down, he landed and bounced! “Whoa!”

He landed in Remus’s hands, and Remus was laughing. “Weren’t expecting a bouncy pillow, were you? Yeah, it’s made of rubber.” He set him down. “Dragon claws and horns would shred any normal pillow to bits without meaning to, so if it’s supposed to catch a falling dragon any number of times that’s more than five, it’s got to be made of something else.”

“Oh.” Once his feet were solidly planted, Thomas looked around the rest of the room.

The walls were covered in tile, like the rest of the interior of the house; however, Thomas was fairly sure that the downstairs was tiled less because of fire hazard and more because of water. Because while there were doors on either side, clearly marking that there were rooms on both sides, the central room was taken up almost entirely by a pool. Actually, calling it a “pool” was understating it – it was almost as wide as the upper floor, so long that there were a couple of pillars on either side around the midway, and the farthest end had an actual waterfall whose mountain stopped just before the ceiling.

“Is the basement wider than the upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Remus answered while Patton wandered around the pool, lightly tapping at the water with his hand and looking around the large room. “My rooms are on the left; V had already taken over the rooms on the right.”

Looking behind him, he saw that there was a door behind him. “What’s back there?”

“Hm?” Remus turned and looked. “Oh, that. That’s the cellar, currently for roots and I’ll probably sneak in some booze at some point.”

Patton’s head snapped around. “Oh, nonononono, no alcohol! You know how dangerous it is for fire dragons to be anywhere near alcohol!”

“I was kidding! It’ll probably just be nightmare bones or something.”

Thomas studied Remus, not sure how serious he was this time, when suddenly a rough boom sounded from above.

Patton looked up. “…Was that…Logan? I didn’t think he ever just roared!”

Thomas stared up at the doorway. “Me neither! I thought he just growled and stuff to let people know he was mind-talking.”

Remus had gone silent, his eyes distant. Then he laughed. “My bro came back. He and Virge had gotten in an argument and Lolo had to actually reestablish his dominance.”

“Dominance?”

“Oh sure,” Remus nodded as Patton wandered over. “Dragons have different social norms than humans. Roaring’s pretty universal across all four types, but we each have our own displays as well.”

Patton nodded. “Okay, I think I can tolerate coming down here for baths if Virgil’s okay with it. Let’s go up again, I want to see what Roman found for windows.”

He grabbed Thomas around the waist with his beak, stepped onto the rubber pillow, stood on his hind legs, and stretched up to set the human into the above floor while Remus continued to ramble about dragon dominance displays. “Air and water actually have the same displays, making their head crests bounce up and down.” Patton climbed over Thomas and up into the ceiling hole to reach Roman’s floor as Remus’s claws appeared suddenly in the hatch’s doorway. “Earth dragon dominance displays are actually kinda funny, they basically headbang at each other.” He pulled himself out and picked up Thomas. “I wonder if Logan ever does that? Eh, probably not – it’d probably pitch his glasses right off.”

Thomas was feeling a little like a doll, being passed from dragon to dragon, but at the same time he couldn’t really bring himself to mind. “What about fire dragons? What do – whoa,” Remus sprang straight up through the doorway into Roman’s floor.

The view was interesting. Roman was sitting on one corner of the wall-in-construction with his arms crossed while Virgil was stretched out along two walls on the opposite side. Both dragons were giving each other the stinkeye. Logan was gone, and Patton was studying the metal stained-glass frames that were as large as Thomas was tall. There was even one that was designed like a door that was big enough for a fire dragon to use.

“Where’s Logan?”

“Went to bargain with a recycling plant for old glass,” Virgil answered. “We already knew we’d have to do this, Logan’s done this for his windows below, but I’m not going to rest easy until all the windows have been finished and Logan has proven to not have any ill effects.”

Thomas tilted his head to the side. “Is glass more dangerous to mess with than stone?”

“Oh yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and by the way, I decided not to make an animation. If I tried to do both an animation and a fanfiction at the same time, one of them would have suffered. Rather than run that risk, I'll stick to just writing this.


	9. Glass, Fire and Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn the dangers of working with glass, and Virgil learns something new about himself. Mention of potential serious harm.

Melting glass for repurposing was dangerous.

Earth dragons did not put glass they were going to be melting into their stomachs; instead, they threw it into their fire sac, which was not really meant to hold anything solid. For that extra reason, the original glass could not be broken, because a punctured fire sac could quickly lead to a dead dragon if not mended right away…via an operation. Since the glass didn’t melt the instant they threw it into their fire sac, they also had to insert pieces one at a time and wait for the first piece to melt before adding more, otherwise they could break something that was already in there and puncture the sac.

Molten glass also could not be left in their flame sac for long, because even melted it was not truly liquid enough to be permitted to stay inside, unlike the magma they generated naturally. If it even remotely started to cool in there, it could cause damage to the inside of the sac (which they only ever called ‘freezing,’ even though cold had nothing to do with what was happening).

In the final piece of danger, molten glass stuck to things like living flesh more readily than their magma, which could lead to terribly bad burns inside a dragon’s mouth. True, molten glass could be blown like a human blew bubbles with gum, but a dragon’s mouth had limits as to how hot something could be, and first-melted glass was something that had to be there and gone quickly, and only blown once it had cooled off a little.

Virgil knew all of this, and it scared him. It had scared him when Logan had made the windows for his personal dwelling, and those had been half the size of what Roman had dragged home to become his own windows, and never mind the stupid door! In order for enough glass to be melted that the entire surface of one of those windows could be coated with even a thin layer, Logan would have to put glass into his flame sac until it was completely filled with molten glass – which was _also_ a huge risk: earth dragons always had some magma simmering in case they ever had to use it, which was how they could melt glass in there in the first place, but it was like having a cup of liquid in a quart measure, and that was as much as it was _supposed_ to contain. Once he’d reached capacity, Logan only had a few seconds to empty the glass out entirely – not minutes, _seconds_ , a minute tops – before his flame sac literally exploded.

Only the fact that Logan had done this before and knew each and every risk was keeping Virgil from going into a complete panic attack.

Virgil wasn’t sure what the earth dragon was going to do for the door. The windows would probably each hit maximum capacity, and the door was twice their size. Maybe he was going to blow a bubble? That’d be very thin, but he was already going to have to cover the windows with two layers each just to make sure they could withstand typical weathering. Bubble-blowing would just require that the door take four layers.

The biggest requirement for this entire procedure would be to make sure that nobody distracted Logan. From the moment the first glass bottle entered his flame sac, every ounce of his focus had to be on what he was doing.

Virgil had already run interference on Remus, stressing to the green dragon that a distracted glass-working dragon could quickly become a dead glass-working dragon, and giving him an ultimatum: either stay in his “dungeon” the whole time, watch _quietly_ , or go away until Logan was done. Remus had left; he didn’t say where he was going, and Virgil hadn’t asked. Patton wasn’t going to be a problem – he was just as worried as Virgil, and he was going to watch the whole proceedings as quiet as a mouse. Virgil was a little surprised that Patton knew the gravity of what Logan was doing without being told. One sentence said it all.

“I’ve seen an earth dragon with a burned mouth thanks to a careless glass experience.”

Thomas had left for more human activities, asking to be kept posted on what was happening. Apparently he was worried about Logan as well.

That left Roman, and Virgil wasn’t sure how he was going to convince him of the importance of what was happening. The garnet fire dragon didn’t seem to be taking this at all seriously.

In fact, when Virgil found him, he was messing around with plants and not seeming concerned at all. “What are you _doing?!_ ”

Roman turned and looked at him. “As much as I seem to be ignoring you, Count Woelaf, I do happen to know a thing or two about burns.” He pushed his pile of plants towards the water dragon. “Here. Lavender, aloe, and comfrey root. If you’re going to be panicking the whole time the nerd is making my windows, you might as well do something constructive.”

He stared, confused. “Wha…how could _I_ do something with _these_?”

“Every single one of these is good for burns, and are better when cold. I can’t do anything like that, but you can.” Another shove against the plants. “Chew those up and stick them into your flame sac.”

Virgil felt like screaming. “I don’t _have_ a flame sac, you idiot, I’m a _water_ dragon!”

Roman dragged his footclaws through the dirt, clearly trying to keep hold of his patience. Virgil agreed, honestly. “I don’t know what name water dragons have for it, but you do have one.” He stalked over and stared directly into Virgil’s eyes. “Mirror-link with me?”

Virgil sighed. “I don’t get why, but if you really can’t make sense any other way then fine.” He lowered his crests – since fire dragons didn’t have any – and tried to allow himself to open up.

“You start the mirroring.”

Well, Virgil could think of one thing he could do that would work; relaxing sounded like a great idea. “ _ **Breathe in for four seconds…**_ ”

They both did.

“ _ **Hold it for seven seconds…**_ ”

Their eyes fell shut.

“ _ **Let it out for eight seconds.**_ ”

They spent about a minute just breathing together, letting their minds align as well as their physical states. Then suddenly, near the end of maybe the fifth ‘hold for seven seconds,’ Virgil discovered two things.

One, somehow Roman had taken over the lead role in their mirror-link.

Two, Roman had just ‘tricked’ him into opening a pipe in his throat that he didn’t know he had!

All four of his eyes snapped open in shock and he yelped out the air he’d been holding, ending the mirror-link.

Roman smirked, swiveled his head so he was looking away from Virgil, and very calmly let out an eight-second stream of fire into the air. Then he returned his gaze to the water dragon. “Do you think you can figure out how to force out from that sac on your own?”

 _Force out? Like I’m actually breathing fire?_ “Uh…”

“Let’s do that breathing again, and mirror again. And to make sure I’m not breathing fire _at_ you, we’ll be side by side.”

And so by the time Logan had returned with Remus’s cart filled with glass bottles and jars, Virgil had learned how to open his ‘fire sac’ and expel its contents – which wasn’t anything except air – and had finally decided to follow Roman’s instructions and packed his newly-discovered organ with plant paste that the fire dragon swore would help burns.

And he was no longer quite so nervous about this process.


	10. Incoming!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragons aren't fireproof on the inside, and working with glass on very little sleep is a dumb idea. At least Logan's roommates, old and new, are there to look out for him and save him from himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that some things don't always come through clearly. If anything doesn't make sense or you're curious about it, you can ask in the comments and I'll either answer you directly or make it a point to clarify/explain in the next chapter. Also I'll be starting a series of short stories after I've gotten a title for this one, to insert things that wouldn't really make very long chapters but still slot into the story (e.g., the first short story that'll be there will slot in between 9 and 10, a conversation between the Creativitwins). Points can be clarified there, too.

Logan spent days melting glass and putting the result into the window frames.

He started with the door, blowing giant bubbles and putting them over its open spaces, cautiously slicing them open to lie flat. Remus watched the third time out of four – evidently he’d always wanted to see an earth dragon blowing a bubble of molten glass – and he sat quietly the whole time, only cheering when Logan had set the bubble down like he had the other two.

Once the door was done, he released the molten glass directly into the window frames, using a breath to spread the glass into all of its new corners.

Logan knew that Virgil was anxious about his doing this, so he wanted to get it over with quickly while still maintaining the appropriate levels of caution. Day and night, he was melting glass and coughing it up into window frames, triple-layering them so that they could withstand the outdoor weather and drinking lots of coffee so that he could stay awake through the process.

And that almost led to disaster.

Logan deemed that he had enough molten glass, and he tipped his head over the edge of the wall to point straight down at the final window (which he knew was right there partly because it was there the last two times and partly because he saw Patton drag that frame into position – he wasn’t wearing his glasses for this), ensuring his neck was straight for an easy passage. Opening his mouth as wide as he could and curling his lips back in a parody of a snarl, he opened the passageway to his flame sac and pushed the contents outward.

It moved slowly, which was part of why this was so dangerous; a dragon could lose patience and try to force the glass to hurry, when it just would not be rushed. He had run the numbers when he’d made his own windows. A full flame sac of molten glass took approximately two minutes to completely reach the open air – it was impossible to get exact when the glass articles were random in size and thus produced minute differences in loads.

He could feel the heat of the glass in his mouth, but he was staying out of the danger zone. Then, ninety seconds after he’d started, he felt a yawn coming on.

His eyes crinkled almost shut, and he inhaled carefully through his nose. _When this is over, I am going to my room and sleeping for…no, I can’t sleep until I have helped to cement one more layer of bricks onto Roman’s walls to hold his new windows and door in place. I’ll sleep for a whole day after that._

He permitted the yawn to exit through his mouth, because that would help to push the glass out just the tiniest bit faster without truly rushing it.

His yawn ended…and his jaw spasmed.

A thick, incredibly hot mass hit his tongue and inside of his mouth.

Patton shrieked. Logan hadn’t reacted in pain yet, but the air dragon must have noticed his eyes snap wide open in an expression that could most eloquently be expressed in words as “Oh crap.”

Logan blinked, and a red blur that suddenly appeared below him coalesced into Roman, who grabbed the earth dragon’s face and kept his jaws from closing. “Did you get the roof of your mouth?”

He could feel the pain starting to come on, but it was logical to get an answer to that question. Staying quiet, he took stock. “ _ **…No, I remembered wHat I wAs dOinG aNd StOpPeD iN tImE.**_ ” He started to whimper.

Roman wrenched his mouth back open and reached in, scraping carefully around the glass and talking the whole time. “Okay, gotta get this mass out so it’s not yanking on your tongue anymore – plus we need to salvage it anyway for the window’s last layer…there!” he let go of Logan’s face and showed a glowing orb of molten glass slowly sliding out of his claw like the slime some humans bought to play with for fun. “I got it, Remus, go for it!”

 _Remus?_ Logan barely had time to wonder when suddenly his ear was grabbed, and he was yanked back over the wall and turned around. He roared in pain and protest at the treatment.

__

“Hold that pose, Lolo,” and suddenly Remus was practically sticking his head into the earth dragon’s mouth, scraping at the remaining small globs of molten glass that were still burning him. “Okay, quick and careful, quick and careful, get as much of this stuff out as possible because I can keep any and everything I salvage and oh yeah the more that’s pulled out the less damage there’ll be hey Fluffy didja get it all out of your flame sac?”

__

“Aaah…” “ _ **It iS iMpoSsiBle tO eXpEl aLl mOlTeN glAsS, sOme aLwAyS rEmAiNs iN tHe MaGmA, bUt thAt GlAsS cAn sTaY tHeRe FoR aN hOuR Or TwO wItHoUt FrEeZiNg. I cAn ExPeL tHe CoNtAmInAtEd mAgMa WhEn iT’s SaFe fOr mE.**_ ” 

__

“Can I keep it when you do cough it up?”

__

Logan probably wouldn’t have been able to comprehend why Remus would want to keep his glass-contaminated magma even if his mind had been clear; in his current pain-addled state, guessing was impossible. And thinking answers back was becoming a problem. “Ah-hah.”

__

“Great! And that’s the last of it,” he pulled out and used his empty hand to angle Logan’s face towards the shaft. “Come on, Frills, come give your boyfriend a get-better kiss.”

__

_Frills? Who…_ Logan didn’t even manage to finish that thought before suddenly Virgil lunged at him and caught the earth dragon’s still-open mouth with his own, with a ferocity that anyone who didn’t know what had just happened could easily mistake for a battle jawlock rather than a deep desperate kiss.

__

Grabbing hold of Logan’s horns with his hands so that he wouldn’t pull back, Virgil heaved out a deep breath into Logan’s mouth – no. A cold, odd-flavored substance hit his tongue, instantly bringing relief from the pain. Virgil’s tongue followed, working to spread what he’d just put there so that every burned area inside Logan’s mouth could be covered with whatever he just did.

__

Logan was shocked. When Virgil let him go, he just sat there for a minute with his mouth open (which had the happy side benefit of releasing some of the remaining excess heat from his burns).

__

Patton fluttered up. “Are you okay now?”

__

He nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off of Virgil.

__

The dark water dragon fussed with his claws a little, before chancing a glance over at him – reading his mind, no doubt, he was always extremely concerned with what others were thinking about him. At least he balked at actually changing anything he found, even if he did happen to have that skill. Then he smiled. “He’ll be fine. He’s just trying to get his head around the fact that I just almost breathed ice and initiated that kiss.”

__

Remus turned and stared at him. “Wait, I was kidding; you mean you two…”

__

Virgil gave him a cool stare. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes we are a couple. And normally when we kiss, he initiates it.”

__

Patton fluttered his wings. “Logan, I’m going to want you to go to bed now and stay there until you’re fully rested. And no construction for a while. If that means that the windows have to wait a couple of days before they can be put into place, so be it – your mouth needs to be fully healed if you’re going to be throwing up rock paste.”

__

Roman sighed from ground level. “I knew you were going to say that, Patton. And while I’m not happy with the delay on my rooms, I know that Logan’s health and safety is more important.”

__

Logan closed his mouth and nodded. Then his nostrils twitched as he realized he could smell blood – water dragon blood – Virgil? He leaned over and squinted at his roommate. His pale face now had two dark spots, one on each side of his mouth.

__

Virgil noticed the attention and carefully tapped at the side of his mouth with a fingertip, looking at it afterward. “Oh. Yeah, I’ll call the dentist and let them know you need a house call to get your tusks shortened again. It won’t mess with your ability to smash cinderblocks, will it?”

__

“ _ **No, I don’t use those lower canines to chew, tusks are for battle. You likely only struck them because you were so desperate to achieve a jawlock and end my pain with that burn remedy. Thank you, by the way; I know you likely already saw my gratitude when you read my mind, but it still bears truly being said.**_ ” He nodded at Remus as Virgil muttered a disclaimer (something about Roman being the one to help him figure out how to do that), and then turned and looked over the wall at the blurry red thing that was Roman. “ _ **Thank you, too, Roman, Remus.**_ ”

__

Roman flared his wing in a parody of a wave without turning around. “You’re welcome. By the way, you’ll have to get that burn remedy out of your mouth before you cough up your, ah, contaminated magma, and then you’ll need another round of it."

__

“ _ **Understood.**_ ”

__

“Maybe wait until after your…tusks get shortened if it’d get in the way…”

__

“ _ **No need; since my tusks protrude even when they are at a respectable length for a noncombatant, shortening them is done with the mouth closed.**_ ” Likely the dentist would just think his breath smelled funny when they came over.

__

“Okay, then you go get your rest, I’ll just be here…waiting for the window to cool enough for me to peel my hands free.”

__

Remus startled, and then grinned over the wall at him. “Wait, really? Your hands are stuck?”

__

Logan considered expressing worry. Then he decided that since _Roman_ wasn’t expressing any worry, he was likely fine. He was a _fire_ dragon, after all, he certainly had the ability to resist far greater quantities of heat than even an earth dragon. “ _ **And by the way, Remus? I know you want to ask, so I’ll just tell you: yes, you can keep the pieces of tusk that the dentist will remove.**_ ”

__

Remus pumped his fists in the air as Logan slowly walked away. “Yes!”

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Logan's "I'm in pain" mindspeak could be hard to understand, so I'll leave translations here.  
> "No, I remembered what I was doing and stopped in time."  
> "It is impossible to expel all molten glass, some always remains in the magma, but that glass can stay there for an hour or two without freezing. I can expel the contaminated magma when it's safe for me."


End file.
